


In The Beginning

by HopeCoppice



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, and not just between the usual two, possible slash if you really squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 16:24:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeCoppice/pseuds/HopeCoppice
Summary: There have been a lot of 'beginnings'. Crowley has been there for all of them.





	In The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies; there's not really a point to this story, but here it is.

In the beginning, it had all been a bit of a laugh. Lucifer had had a bee in his bonnet[1] about something God had said, and he'd told Crawly he was getting a bit of a gang together for some larks and tomfoolery[2], and Crawly hadn't been entirely sure what that meant but if Lucifer was paying attention to him he didn't see any need to be rude, and besides, whatever they were up to had to be more interesting than just waiting around for Creation to happen, or listening to Gabriel talk about what probably  _was_ happening while the Almighty worked out the details.

_[1] Neither bees nor bonnets having yet been invented, this was quite impressive and only made Lucifer, the ultimate Cool Guy of Heaven, seem even cooler.  
[2] The concept designs for larks were still highly classified and the fact that Lucifer had apparently seen them was also extremely cool. Crawly had a sneaking suspicion that Lucifer had entirely made up the word 'tomfoolery' and whatever nebulous concept might lie beneath it._

Then something had happened - Crawly wasn't even entirely certain what it had been, because he'd been at the back of Lucifer's crowd, focusing on trying to look cool and wondering how you were supposed to tell if you'd managed it, and then suddenly Lucifer had been falling, and his closest associates were falling too, and somehow Crowley had been left behind. Perhaps the Almighty hadn't noticed him; perhaps he hadn't been close enough to Lucifer to count. It seemed rather harsh, that was all, throwing Lucifer out as if he'd never meant anything, as if he hadn't been the Morningstar, the Almighty's favourite.  
"Why did you do that?" There had been a Great Ineffable Sigh, and Crowley had fallen, too.

The fall was lonely; he wondered if Lucifer and the gang would be waiting for him at the bottom. When he landed, crumpled and dazed, it had been in the middle of a sort of bitter celebration among the other demons. Lucifer had looked at him - looked right at him, in that way he had of making you feel like an _individual_ , and asked him what had taken him so long.  
"I suppose he was flapping like mad, trying to stay up," Hastur had sneered, and Crawly realised he should probably have thought of that. He shrugged.  
"I asked the Almighty why She did it." Silence fell upon the assembled angels - fallen angels - they would have to give themselves a name - and for a moment, Crawly thought he was about to be cast out _again_. Then Lucifer beamed, apparently delighted by this answer, and clapped Crawly on the back.  
"She doesn't like being questioned, does She? I challenged Her, and then you questioned Her. Well done, Crawly. Keep this sort of thing up and you could be one of my top demons."  
"Demons?"  
"Very good! Always the Questioner! But no more of that, Crawly. I've got a job for you, once Creation is done."  
"How will we-?" He stopped, Lucifer's expression turning colder, and realised that questioning things was going to work out just fine for him as long as he never questioned _Lucifer_. "I mean, I can't imagine we're going to be given the details now."  
"Ah, we have our ways," Lucifer had told him, and gone off to begin a Creation of his own, transforming wherever they were into somewhere they could call home. Only they weren't calling it home, they were calling it Hell, and it wasn't very hospitable, really, and Crawly couldn't imagine for the life of him what Lucifer intended to do with so much of it.

  
  


In the beginning, there was no shame. Below it all, the demons cackled and plotted and bonded over their misfortune, and Crawly cackled with them. God was being ridiculous, and it seemed only fair that he and his merry band of misfits should wreak a little havoc with the new Creation. They were together, and defiant, and they had nothing to be ashamed of. They were forging their own paths, building their own Creation, and Crawly was sent up to stir the hornet's nest.[3]

_[3] The hornet's nest was located at the very edge of the Garden, and the message from Lucifer's spy in Heaven suggested that God didn't particularly want the humans to find and stir it. Crawly, therefore, was sent to find out what would happen if somebody did, and additionally, if possible, to cause some trouble while he was up there._

The first man and woman frolicked naked in the Garden, and Crawly watched with mild curiosity as they explored their new home. They seemed to have made it a personal mission to put something from each and every tree into their mouths - except for one, right at the centre.

Crawly had copied the form of one of the creatures he'd spotted in the undergrowth - a sleek, black creature with no legs to speak of - because something about the way it moved made him smile. Now, he used that form to wriggle his way up to the woman. _Make some trouble_ , Lucifer had said, and Crawly supposed he couldn't do that without making conversation, at least.  
"You're not going to try that one?"  
The woman jumped, not having seen him approach, and Crawly grinned. This form was stealthy, and stealth was fun.[4]  
"We mustn't," she told him, "it's forbidden."  
"Forbidden? By who?" The answer was obvious, really. "God? But She put it here. Why would she put this fruit tree in with all your other fruit trees if you're not allowed to eat this one?"  
"I don't know," the woman admitted. "I never thought to ask."  
"Well, fair enough." Crawly looked up at the apple, hanging over both of their heads, and the woman looked too. "It looks good, though, doesn't it?"  
"It looks delicious," the woman agreed, and when Crawly slithered up into the branches for a closer look, she reached up to touch the shiny red orb. Touching it was a mere slip of the wrist from picking it, and then, once she'd picked it...  
"Seems a shame to waste it, doesn't it?" Crawly wondered aloud, secretly curious about the orb's inner texture - crisp and shiny as the outside was, it couldn't possibly be like that all the way through, could it?  
The woman frowned. "It does."

_[4] There was absolutely no need for stealth in either Heaven or Hell, but demons startled when you appeared right behind them just as surely as angels did, being from the same basic stock, and Crawly found the jolt of surprise extremely entertaining to watch._

Crawly wasn't actually paying attention when the Original Sin was committed, although of course he told Lucifer he'd been angling for it all along.  _What better way to cause trouble than to ask a woman what an apple might taste like, eh, Lucifer?_ Lucifer didn't seem entirely impressed, but he didn't argue, just waved Crawly away and went back to planning... whatever it was he was planning.

No, the truth was that Crawly hadn't been expecting the woman to give into temptation so fast, and had in fact raised his head to taste the air in the sunlight. It was quite nice, this Garden. Full of plants, which were a new thing Crawly rather approved of, and- a strange taste hit his forked tongue, and he looked down to find that the woman had bitten into the apple. Its insides, as it turned out, were juicy, and she smiled as she wiped the juice from her chin.  
"I have to share this with Adam. It's lovely." Then she looked down at herself and cringed. "But first I'm going to cover up a bit."

  
  


In the Beginning, Crawly skulked in the shadows of the Eastern Gate as the man and the woman fled into the wilderness. He couldn't help but notice that they had somehow acquired fire from somewhere, and also that fire seemed to be doing a pretty good job of holding off the predators that roamed the world outside of Eden.[5] The angel at the gate hadn't spotted him yet; if he did, no doubt he would chase him out, too. He looked at the angel, resplendent with his fluffy white wings atop the wall, and he looked at the concern on his face as he watched the humans fight a line, and he felt, for the first time, that he shouldn't be where he was, doing what he was doing. That he should, perhaps, have kept quiet when Lucifer was hurled from Heaven, and kept his own wings pure and white. He had tasted the Fruit of Knowledge, now, tasted the tiny particles of juice on the air, and he was aware of a new sense of doubt. God hadn't needed to throw Lucifer out - hadn't needed to throw  _any_ of them out - over a mild challenge to Her authority, but Crawly also hadn't had to open his stupid mouth and get himself cast out with the rest. He hadn't had to be loyal to his friends, and he hadn't had to embrace demonic activity so wholeheartedly, and he hadn't had to tempt the woman. Watching the angel worry over the humans' fate, Crawly was suddenly very aware that perhaps  _he_ should have considered the consequences before he'd acted. Now it was too late, and he felt very small and insecure.

_[5] Later, when Lucifer asked for weaponry ideas, Crawly would present fire as his own idea and then, just to be a bit flashy, had suggested that they brand their version 'hellfire'. Branding was a new concept - brand new - and Hell rather liked the idea of taking existing products and making them more 'exclusive' by changing the names._

The best way to hide insecurity, instinct told him, was to act as if you had no idea you shouldn't be doing what you were doing, or standing exactly where you were. That was why he approached the Principality of Aziraphale, an angel whose conduct was, from his observations over the last several days and in the time before The Fall, absolutely irreproachable, and greeted him for all the world as if he, Crawly, was just another angel of similar rank. It was why he copied the angel's form, more or less, in broad strokes. He even tried to avoid questions, to begin with; hadn't questions got him into more trouble than they were worth? He should stick to statements: he didn't see how knowledge was a bad thing; he didn't understand why the tree was right there if so. But then he realised what looked different about the angel, and he had to ask.

"Didn't you have a flaming sword?”


End file.
